There are dogs in The Sims 4. There are also cats in the Sims 4. Players would expect that the much-beloved horse from The Sims 3 will follow. It’s a given if you’ve been following the franchise for a while, when there are small four-legged animals available in certain TS4 expansions, why can’t the larger animals be around? There are cows and llamas, so why aren’t any horses in The Sims 4?

You may have read The Sims 4 Producer Antonio Romeo's tweet on why there are no horses still in the recent Cottage Living expansion. Other articles attempting to explain this have more likely centered around this. Let’s focus more on what the game offers to figure out why going out on horseback isn’t yet possible.

There’s the map size to tackle first. Horses aren’t particularly fond of small spaces. You’ll need a sizable investment to even take care of one, let alone a few of them. Having a horse walking around in rather cramped conditions cheapens the feel of the game. There are two ways to make horse riding more immersive: you either need to have every map large enough to accommodate horses or your equestrian lifestyle will have to be confined to special worlds. Going for any of these options is going to be a considerable effort on both time and programming.

The second concern is that game types involving horses in The Sims 4 are going to be limited. Sure, many activities involving horses don’t need extremely wide open spaces, but you are gimped on experiencing the full range of what a TS4 horse has that The Sims 2 and 3 don’t. Having a horse only during show jumps? Horse races? You would have been better off downloading a free mobile app centering on that content over buying an entire expansion pack. These game types mean you don’t get to interact with your hoofed mammal the same way as dogs and cats.

All right, all right. We can’t have horses in The Sims 4 - at least, officially. And as you know, when the main game offerings don’t satisfy the player base, there’s the mod community to the rescue. There are a few notable mods to add horses to the game. One of these is the famed mod creator behind the Brookheights open-world mod.

The The finalized version of the FarmLand Mod is available for use. Not only do you get horses, but pretty much everything else you need in giving your Sims the farm life. You can also try Farasi the Horse Mod, where you got a moving horse you can pet, ride on, and feed.

For those who are interested in telling a picture story with horses, you can make use of the Mt First Pony pose pack. Playing on a console or a low-spec PC but not wanting to miss out on horses? Having the Cats & Dogs expansion pack gains you access to turn large dogs into miniature horses. Thanks to talented community contributors, you can use CAS tools to create your own mini-horses in the game.

As always, double-check if any mods are compatible with recent patches. Reach out to the community or to the main mod page in case you find trouble making them work.

It will be a far possibility for The Sims 4 to have horses at this stage of the game, but options are always available.